Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Week Eight - ONLINE APPLICATIONS AND TOOLS

Thing #19 - Check out LibraryThing


It was a lot of fun learning about LibraryThing. I'm not sure if I'll have time to catalog all my own books, but I like the idea about finding out how others have reviewed books I like, and to see what other books people with similar tastes to mine are reading.

I also liked seeing the tagging element of LibraryThing and the tag cloud that certain tag words create. Users can tag their books in whatever way makes sense to them. In this way, we again see how tagging creates a great way for personal classification and organization. It's data organization in the hands of the user. Quite powerful.

LibraryThing provides services for both personal and professionals needs. The ability of the site to organize and categorize books based on user likes has unlimited applications. Members can organize their own collections, seek recommendations for similar books to the one they like and join anyone of a number of social groups and discussion boards. The user also has the option of creating a profile to share with others in the LibraryThing community. The ease of use and accessibility of the data makes it a site that will continue to grow and chance with the needs of the community who uses it.

So I added a widget to enable you to search my library. You can find it to the right of the postings on this blog. Since I only have 6 books in my library, you probably won't get much information, but I love putting widgets on my blog - what can I say!

Here's the link to my catalog, as with many things in my life - a works in progress!
My Library Thing Catalog

1 comment:

Jackie S, 2.0 project manager said...

LibraryThing is a great tool for students, too. It could be introduced to students in the beginning of a year and be set up with categories of books read -- course-related, entertainment, extra-curricular (or a better sounding name.) Over the years, each student will see how much they've read/grown, what their friends have read, and so on. Lots of possibilities. This could become a school literacy strategy.